1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to video playback and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for subtitle display.
2. Description of the Related Art
Television programs, films, video games and other digital content are often displayed with subtitles. Subtitles may be in the form of a written translation of dialog in a foreign language or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language to help viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing to follow the dialog. While a portion of the digital content is being viewed, the subtitles are displayed at the bottom of a viewing screen. However, displaying subtitles when the digital content is being played at a rate different than normal remains a challenge.
Currently, when the digital content is displayed using a fast-forward mode, or a reverse mode, the changed display speed makes the subtitles virtually unreadable. For example, if digital content is fast-forwarded at a speed of eight times (8×) normal speed, every 8th frame of the video content is displayed while 7 consecutive frames are skipped. The subtitles associated with those frames are skipped at the same rate as the image content, and therefore are displayed either very rapidly, or not at all. While using the fast forward or reverse modes, the ability to determine a specific location of a desired portion of display content is limited to visual or temporal cues (e.g., observing, at a high rate of frames per second, video digital content that appears similar to the desired video content). The ability to view the subtitles would be extremely useful to help understand the context of the scenes, especially for content that may have periods of mostly static scenes, such as a long conversation, as in a news or training video.
Therefore, in the event of a change in display speed, there is a need for a method and apparatus for subtitle display.